


Human Habit

by cheshiredog



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x20, Angst, Canon Compliant, Castiel's Mixtape, Confessions, Confused Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester is Bad at Feelings, DeanCas - Freeform, Destiel - Freeform, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, Heaven, Humor, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series Finale, Series Finale, Spoilers, Superantural Series Finale, the ending they deserved, they finally talk about what happened because jesus fuck that was so stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:48:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28794189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshiredog/pseuds/cheshiredog
Summary: Cas and Dean have a few choice words for each other in Heaven.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 14
Kudos: 119





	Human Habit

**Author's Note:**

> I have...so very many ideas for these two...so many feels... Please, ignore me as I devolve into insanity.

_So I’m sorry to my unknown lover_

_Sorry that I can’t believe_

_That anybody ever really_

_Starts to fall in love with me_

_Sorry to my unknown lover_

_Sorry I could be so blind_

_Didn’t mean to leave you_

_And all of the things that we had behind_

“Sorry” by Halsey

Heaven lived. Heaven should have always been alive. After Chuck left, leaving the reins in the hands of the angels, things had started to wilt. Chuck always built beautiful things, but he never built them to last, especially not without him. Perhaps his greatest flaw: always needing to be needed. It had led to his downfall, after all.

But now, under Jack and Cas’s nurturing guidance, Heaven lived again. It breathed like it had so many eons ago, when the universe was fresh and the angels still full of faith and hope.

A lush valley sprawled before Cas and Jack from where they surveyed atop a hill overlooking the stretch of green trees and grass, the gush of waterfall spilling into the wandering river. Souls resided there. Free to move about, to find each other or not as they pleased, their existences fulfilled not by Jack but by themselves. Heaven gave them what they needed. They built their own paths now.

 _It’s beautiful, Jack._ Cas and Jack had sloughed their physical forms, their voices not from any mouth yet echoing off the hilltops.

Jack smiled—or what passed for smiling in their incorporeal forms. _It is._

 _It’s not finished._ Part of Cas lamented that he could no longer keep things from Jack, no longer hide behind the safety of limited human perception. Jack would know Cas was hinting for him to hang around.

Jack seemed to smile wider, the molecules in the air vibrating just that much harder. _It will never be finished._

Perhaps that was the point.

 _Dean has arrived,_ Jack said suddenly. He didn’t sound surprised, but Cas stunned himself into physical existence.

“What?” Cas snapped.

Jack appeared beside him in the modest blue jeans, t-shirt, and jacket he’d worn when he’d ascended. The same outfit he’d had on when Cas had met him only a few short years ago. Jack’s eyes rounded with alarm. “Bobby is welcoming him.” He almost sounded afraid that Cas might be mad at him despite his omniscience.

Mouth a firm line, Cas exhaled through his nose. “It hasn’t even been a month on Earth. How is he here already?”

“Free will, Cas. I don’t control when humans live or die any more than I control what they do.”

Cas squeezed his eyes shut. Doing so didn’t block any sensory input—he still ‘saw’ in the sense that he knew all of Heaven at all times—but human habits die hard. Cas hoped they never died.

There he was. Dean Winchester, nursing a couple of beers with Bobby in front of Harvelle’s Roadhouse. He looked just the same and yet so very different in ways Cas couldn’t identify. But still beautiful.

“Is Sam coming too?” Cas asked, opening his eyes. He couldn’t imagine Dean in Heaven without Sam, but he didn’t want Sam dying any time soon either.

Concern that Cas was angry with him still twisted Jack’s features, and Cas softened his expression, his shoulders. Jack relaxed with him as he replied, “Not yet.”

Cas could have answered that question for himself, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t like peeking into the futures of those he had left behind on Earth. In fact, he didn’t even like checking in on them living their human lifetimes, living without him. Especially Dean. It was so human a feeling, so painful, but he appreciated that Jack hadn’t taken that from him. Although ignorance was proving a somewhat regretful decision if it meant being unpleasantly surprised at the haste his friends made to join them in the afterlife.

An afterlife which Dean was apparently choosing to spend driving the Impala. Cas squinted. “I’ll be back.” There was no point to the words. Jack would see all. But human habits.

* * *

Dean tapped his fingers on Baby’s steering wheel to the beat of “Carry on My Wayward Son,” letting the gusts of fresh air rip through his hair, the smell of leather and wind and pavement swirling around him. If this was the new Heaven, Cas and Jack had done a damn fine job. Cas and Jack. Cas was alive. Dean smiled. It started small, gradual, and grew into a beaming aching grin, all teeth and crow’s feet. A laugh wiggled its way out of his lungs.

Cas was alive, and he was here, and he’d helped rebuild Heaven the way it should’ve always—

The faint rustle of wings.

 _“Son_ uva _bitch!”_ Dean swerved, his heart threatening mutiny as he skidded Baby to a jerky halt on the shoulder of the road. He rounded on Cas in the passenger seat. “Cas! Don’t— _do_ that!”

Cas scrunched his face in that familiar expression, and Dean’s chest ached in a whole new way. “Dean—”

Dean punched Cas in the ribs. The angle inside the car was awkward, so it was the best he could manage. “You _asshole._ Again? You sacrificed yourself for me _again_?” Dean punched him again and again and again, harder, movements more disorganized, more desperate. “ _Are you kidding me, man?_ And after all that-that—stuff you said?” He paused, panting, considering whether to continue pommeling Cas with his fists but instead shoved open his door and stormed out. The gritty asphalt scraped under his boots, grounding him.

Cas didn’t follow. When Dean glanced back, he was just sitting there, seemingly shocked motionless. Probably confused. Wasn’t he always?

Dean mouthed curses to the sky before stalking back to lean into the open driver’s side, one hand propped on the roof. “You gonna get out so we can talk or what?”

The lines in Cas’s forehead hadn’t changed. Why would they have? It hadn’t been that long. Still. Somewhere in the back of Dean’s mind, behind all the fuming and swearing, the familiarity was a welcome comfort.

Cas clambered out of the car. He and Dean straightened together, staring at each other across Baby’s roof. They strode in tandem, meeting halfway at her trunk. Restlessness itched in every atom of Dean’s being—soul? whatever—but he couldn’t tell if it was a desire to keep hitting Cas or to hug him. Both, probably.

Neither of them were sure of anything now. Cas seemed to be waiting. Finally, Dean broke eye contact, lowering his gaze to Cas’s chest as he lifted a hand to that same level, hovering uncertainly before pressing fingers to the blue tie, the white button-down. His hand curled into a fist, but the punches were light taps now, like fist bumping Cas’s sternum.

Contact.

Cas was here.

Solid.

Dean looked into his face again. “Don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?”

Cas set his jaw. “Why are you here, Dean?”

“What? You think I should be somewhere else?” He was a damned soul after all. He’d tortured souls. Hell, he’d been a demon. He _should’ve_ gone someplace else. But Cas wouldn’t want to hear Dean say that, not after everything he’d said, everything he believed of him.

“Why are you here now? So soon?” Cas clarified.

Dean shrugged. “Vamp got me. Nothing I could do.”

“A vampire?” Cas said slowly.

“Yeah, a vamp, Cas. Fangs, undead, sucks blood.” Using two fingers, he mimed fangs puncturing his neck. “Wasn’t the vamp that killed me, though. Pushed me back on a piece of rebar, of all things. What can I say? I got clumsy.” Dean shrugged.

“I suppose I still forget how fragile humans are. Even you.”

“Hey, I am not fragile, okay? Just—mortal. Most of the time.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Cas’s mouth, his attitude obviously resisting it. But it was infectious. Dean didn’t fight the smirk. He looked away, down the long road that somehow looked more endless than any road on Earth.

“I’m sorry,” Cas said.

Dean shifted his eyes back to him. “What?”

“You’re upset that I sacrificed myself again. I’m not sorry I did it. But I am sorry that it hurt you. I knew it would; I-I just didn’t see another way out.”

“Cas…”

“And I am sorry for-for the way—the things—how I left you. It was—cruel. To suddenly tell you those things and then leave you all alone.”

“It’s-it’s like you said, man. You didn’t have a choice.”

Cas’s eyes softened in that way—God, he looked like— No. Don’t think about that. “You used to say we always have a choice,” Cas said, his voice taking on an even deeper, more gravelly quality than normal. His scolding yet fond tone. The one he used whenever Dean said something self-deprecating.

“Yeah. Well, I’m wrong about a lot of things,” mumbled Dean.

Cas didn’t argue. He just kept looking at Dean with that expression. The one… Dean stared down at his boots. After too long a silence, he managed to string together some choppy words. “Cas. Man. I’m-I’m glad you’re okay.” With Herculean strength, he lifted his gaze to meet Cas’s before pulling him into a hug. Dean’s fingers dug into Cas’s trench coat. As they separated, his hand lingered on Cas’s shoulder, and he drew a deep breath. “And, um. About what you said before-before you— You know. Uh, I didn’t get to really take it all in back then. Everything happened so fast… Anyway, I don’t know if I really got what you—meant? You know… You said—you said—you knew you couldn’t have it? What you really wanted? What-what couldn’t you have?”

Dean searched Cas’s face tentatively. Cas’s eyes were downcast, mouth a considering line. Dean wasn’t sure if he really had a body here in Heaven, but it sure felt like he did, the familiar unpleasant feeling of panic setting every nerve ending alight.

Finally, Cas looked back up at him. “You, Dean.”

Dean couldn’t breathe.

Whether or not he needed it here, his lungs burned for air. He swallowed, forced a breath in and out. “Me.”

“Yes.”

“As in—?”

“It doesn’t matter. I understand how you feel about me, Dean. Nothing has to change.”

Dean frowned. “You do?”

“What?”

“You understand how I feel about you?”

Cas tilted his head. Fuck, Dean had missed that head tilt. “I seem to recall you telling me many times that we’re family. That I’m like a brother to you.”

“Yeah?”

A flash of pained exasperation pinched Cas’s features, and Dean bit back a line of snark. He was trying to listen. Trying to understand. Cas sighed, “I don’t love you as just a brother.”

“I don’t love you as just a brother either.”

Cas’s shoulders tensed. “And not just as a friend.”

“Right. Me neither.”

“Dean.”

“Cas.”

“Do I really have to spell it out for you?”

“No.”

“I’m trying to— What?”

“Come on, man. I get it. Do you?”

Cas squinted as he said slowly, “I-I don’t think I do.”

Dean rubbed his chin, casting his gaze across the tree line, down the road, over Baby’s sleek lines. “You’ve always been more, Cas. I don’t-I don’t know exactly what. But you’re more to me. More than a brother, more than a friend. I know it’s not—maybe not exactly the same way you feel, but—I don’t know.” The sky was a scorched blue, washed pale by a blazing sun that made Dean squint against its light. “Why did you think you couldn’t have it? Why did you decide everything without asking anybody else?”

Cas didn’t answer for so long Dean couldn’t stand it anymore, blinking after the brightness of the sky to see Cas’s face. Brow furrowed, Cas stared at him. “Was-was I wrong?”

Dean shrugged, his voice thin, strained. “I-I don’t-I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Dean…”

Both groped for further words, for anything to say, but came up empty-handed. Dean stepped away first, scratching a hand through his hair. Facing away from Cas, he leaned an elbow on Baby’s roof.

There still seemed so much to say, but where were the words?

Dean had never been good with talking anyway. He pivoted back to Cas. He still hadn’t moved. His eyes were focused somewhere far away. Legs as sturdy as noodles and hands steady as leaves, Dean reached for Cas’s lapels to straighten them. Without thinking, he reached to touch Cas’s jaw. He’d done it so many times before. The contact summoned Cas back to himself, and his eyes widened just slightly with comprehension.

“I do—love you, Cas. I don’t-I don’t know how exactly. I can’t really put a name on it. It’s just—you.” Dean shook his head helplessly. “And I don’t know—maybe I can’t give you everything you need or be everything you want, but I-I want to try.”

Cas’s mouth softened into a tender smile. “I want that too.”

Dean’s lower lip trembled, and he crushed Cas in another hug to hide his furious blinking. “Okay,” he choked. “Okay.” Tear ducts back in line, Dean released Cas, sniffing once and trudging back to Baby’s open door.

Her leather interior groaned quietly as he sank into her comfort, one leg inside, one leg out. A moment later Cas joined him. They exchanged a quick glance, the breathy rush of a laugh, a roughly cleared throat.

Dean rolled his eyes to himself. They were acting like teenagers.

With a creak that seemed ear-splitting in the heavy quiet, Dean shut his door and fiddled with the keys, inserting them to start up the radio. Kansas no longer played, making way for Bon Jovi. Dean couldn’t stop his eyes flitting to Cas’s face, wondering what he thought of the old classic rock band. Cas hardly seemed to be listening. He watched Dean, a warm fondness in his expression that made Dean squirm in his seat.

“May I?” Cas asked, reaching toward the stereo.

Dean raised his eyebrows but nodded.

From his coat pocket, Cas produced a cassette tape. It took Dean a second to recognize his own handwriting. Cas ejected the tape already inside, sliding in its place the Zeppelin mixtape Dean had made him. Dean closed his eyes. Zeppelin was home. The same way Baby was home, and Sam, and—

And Cas.

A warm brush of skin startled Dean’s eyes open. He blinked down at his hand, resting on his thigh, the back of Cas’s fingers grazing his. Cas was looking out the window, not at him. Cas let his hand settle on the seat between them. Dean swallowed.

Cas’s fingers fit between Dean’s like Dean’s hands on Baby’s steering wheel. It just felt right.

Soon, Dean realized he needed that hand to shift gears, but he would make do. He rolled them back onto the road, air stirring the cabin as they picked up speed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Cas shaking his head, a faint smirk turning his lips.

“What?” Dean asked.

“Human habit.”

“Again, what?”

“Believing I know what you’re thinking and feeling. Such a human habit.”


End file.
